THE expression of political thought in England, at least down
to Elizabeth's reign and even to the end of the century,
was, for the most part, inextricably entangled with religious
controversy. Thinkers were concerned chiefly with the question of
the nature of the Church and its relation to civil authority, as they
had been in the Middle Ages. Even the question of the nature of
political obligation was discussed chiefly in this connection. But
under Henry VIII and Edward VI political thought was also taking
another and quite different direction. The conception of an 'absolute'
national sovereignty was developed mainly in connection with the
Reformation: the conception of the Church of England as an aspect
of the commonwealth presupposed a conception of the commonwealth.
This idea of a Christian commonwealth, inherited from the Middle
Ages, was being explored without specific reference to the Church.
Men were considering the actual structure of society and asking how
its parts are related and what binds it together and what should be
its animating purpose. In this there was nothing whatever that was
new. It is true to say that, under Henry VIII and Edward VI, there
was formed a conception of what the commonwealth should be, or,
if you like to put it so, of what it really is. It would be more fully
true to say that medieval conceptions received at that time a fresh
expression. The writers who furnished that expression were, in the
main, reproducing medieval conceptions of the meaning and purpose
of the social and political order and of the duty of every man in his
station to see to it that his activities were strictly related to that
end. So only could he be justified and so only serve the purpose
of God. England in the sixteenth century was passing through an
economic as well as a religious revolution. The idealists of the mid-
century, therefore, tended to see in co-operation for economic purposes
the immediate object of the social and political structure. But that
tendency, too, is visible earlier; and as fully as Aquinas or St. Antonino
of Florence, they found in religion the unifying and defining and animating purpose of society.

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